Sunday, March 20, 2011

The graduate show 2011 of the institute for fashion design in Basel took place a week ago and it was the first time I had the chance to attend. I was already impressed solely by the size and organization of the whole event and they surely do not have to hide from any regular fashion show. You already kind of notice how much money is involved and what prestige it must be in Switzerland to graduate from that school by looking at the long list of sponsors. There were 18 collections in total from all the graduates. The overall quality and finish of the clothes looked impressive as far as I could tell from my seat and you could sell them straight from the runway. Most of the clothes looked rather futuristic (in a good way) and more or less wearable. Wearability shouldn't be a criterion for a graduate collection anyway though. Shini linked me an interesting interview about this subject matter between Cathy Horyn and Louise Wilson (director of the M.A. program at Central Saint Martins). Here are my favourite looks from the show and I would love to hear how they compare to graduate students from your city or country.

11 comments:

Everything seems to be quite exo-skeleton in inspiration. Did they all have to meet a specific brief for their final show? The exploration of fabrics and textiles is extremely admirable that it utilises fabric with innovation in mind but does not feel like some student collections that produce forced and contrived outcomes whilst they explored their textiles. Some of them do feel somewhat close in execution and mood but I would suppose when you are working with other students in the same workroom day in day out you may take inspiration from others work. Ultimately they are better for it so all the power to them

It looked like a great graduate collection that the institute for fashion design Basel should be extremely proud of

I really like the collections and compared to Toronto and other cities there is a certain taste level to these students that many Toronto graduates can't seem to grasp. Graduate students create very "wearable" and conventional things that are constructed beautifully but you can find the same thing in fast fashion stores.